The Best Way to Advertise Online:
PPC Marketing
If you are struggling to get more traffic to your website, then let's talk about PPC which is one of the best ways to attract viewers online.
In this article we are going to be looking at:
• What PPC is,
• Why you should use PPC,
• How PPC works, and
• How using PPC will help you improve the profitability of your campaigns
So, this article will serve as a quick introduction to PPC by looking at some of the key elements to a profitable and successful pay-per-click campaign.
WHAT IS PPC MARKETING?
PPC stands for Pay Per Click, and Pay Per Click advertising is a way of digital marketing where you can put ads in strategic places and pay a fee only when the ad gets clicked by a viewer. Hence, the name Pay Per Click. This is a way to buy clicks for your site instead of attracting them organically.
As you might assume from what we just said, PPC marketing is pay-per-click advertising, but basically, it is any advertising channel online where you're paying every time somebody clicks on the ad. Now, the most popular PPC channel, and the one we're going to be looking at today is Google Ads. This is where you're basically advertising on the search result pages on Google. So when you type in a keyword and you see those ads at the top and bottom of the pages, that is what we're going be talking about today.
WHY YOU SHOULD CHOOSE PPC MARKETING
So, why do businesses love PPC, and why do those who specialize in helping businesses generate traffic and sales find themselves recommending it so often to client?
Well, basically, there are two main benefits to PPC as an advertising campaign.
• SPEED:
The first is speed. If you need more sales or leads and sales fast (like the next month), there are very few ways as effective - and fast - as pay-per-click. With a pay-per-click ad you can get qualified traffic straight from Google to your website very quickly.
Typically you can get the ad set up and get some traffic coming through within a few days, depending on how much time you're putting into the campaign, obviously. So, that speed is really useful, particularly if you need to test a new product, a new website, a new offering; or if your business just really needs some sales right now. And who doesn't love speed. So, speed is a real key benefit of pay-per-click and one of the advantages.
• DATA:
The second advantage is the data that we get. And the data advantage from pay-per-click is massive. You see, if you want to find out which keywords people are searching for that are then turning into leads for you're business, pay-per-click is by far the best way to do it. You don't get that information from organic search results, and organic search also takes much longer.
Now, of course, Digital Media is known for its SEO, and we absolutely love SEO. Successful entrepreneurs built loads of successful businesses based on SEO. So we're never going to say SEO isn't good. SEO is amazing, but it is slower than pay-per-click.
• DRAWBACK OF PPC OVER SEO, SEM:
Now, obviously, the downside of pay-per-click is that you're paying for every single click, and it can get expensive. If you've tried and experimented and failed with PPC previously, you'll know it can feel a bit like a big, fat black, hole with Google's name on where you just pump your company's profits, and then Google takes all that money and invests it in self-driving cars. And, on top of that, when you add that Google is taking photos of every single street in the entire world and, the most ridiculous of all their experiments, Google+, it becomes even more disheartening. So, Google has taken all of the pay-per-click budget, and invested it in all of the rest of the Google empire. That's basically how it funds Google.
HOW PPC MARKETING WORKS
So, pay-per-click is an extremely profitable thing for Google. That doesn't necessarily mean, however, it's bad for us, because actually it can be very profitable; but it has to be run very carefully.
So, let's look at some of the components of a profitable PPC campaign. The first component (or the first thing to be conscious of), is intent; what is it that you are after, or what do you wnat to accomplish with your ad?
• THE INTENT OF YOUR AD
Intent is so important with PPC. This is true because when you're choosing which keywords to advertise against, you have to be conscious that there are many different types of intent for searches. For our purpose here, however, there are two main types of intent that we should be looking at when running PPC ads. You have informational searches, and then you've got commercial searches. There are on the one hand people who are looking for information. So, if I'm thinking about cosmetic dentistry, I might be searching for the best whitening treatment. Or maybe I’m looking for Invisalign versus braces. These are informational searches where I'm trying to get a specific answer. Now, on the other hand, if I'm looking to buy something, I might be searching for a cosmetic dentist . In this case, it has commercial intent because that's typically going to result in a purchase or an inquiry.
· HOW TO MAKE INTENT WORK FOR YOU
When you're running pay-per-click campaigns and you're paying for every single click, you typically want the commercial searches. You want the people that are going to turn into money. You don't want to waste too much of your budget on merely informational people. Most of the people actually are not going buy, or they're not going buy right now.
Yes, it is true that there are circumstances where you will want to target informational search terms. For example, if you have a very long buying cycle, you might want to get people right at the start. But on the whole, you'll typically be wanting to target people with commercial intent only. So, that is the first criteria. The first thing to be conscious of is intent.
The second factor to a successful pay-per-click campaign is understanding volume.
• VOLUME OF THE AD:
In most instances volume is important because obviously you are showing your ads on keywords that have very low search volumes, in which case you are not likely to get much traffic. So you need to make sure the phrases that you're targeting have enough volume to actually generate the leads and sales that you're looking for.
HOW TO MAKE VOLUME WORK FOR YOU?
Now, volume is one of the most misunderstood, and most likely one of the wrongly prioritized metrics in Google Ads. People tend to think that a higher volume must be really good. We will have more to say about that in a little more detail below, but here I want to give you a formula that you can use. This formula will show you that volume really isn't as important as some of the other things found in the list. But you do, of course, need enough search volume so that it's actually possible to generate enough leads and sales to make your investment profitable.
The third area that you need to be careful about is budget.
• BUDGET OF YOUR AD
Now, this is probably the one thing that is most often gotten wrong. This is especially so when it comes to small or medium-sized companies. When you're doing Google Ads, you need to be investing enough that you can actually expect to get leads and sales.
I'm going to give you a formula that you can use to work out what your budget should be. But it's not uncommon for us to be sent a pay-per-click campaign for a really, really tiny, tiny company who's got a very, very small budget and they'll have something like this. They'll be paying four dollars per click and they might have set a budget of 15 pounds a day. Really, really, really low budget. And they're saying, "Why is it not converting? "Why are we not getting leads or sales? "Pay-per-click's rubbish."
Well, three pounds PPC, you're probably gonna be getting five visitors a day if your budget's 15 pounds a day. So, let's say that your website converts at 1%, which is pretty poor, but it's about average. You're going to need 100 visitors on that site before you're gonna get a lead or sale. So, with five visitors a day, you're gonna be waiting 20 days before you're getting that lead. With a budget like that, it's just gonna take ages. There's no way around it.
For now just know that if you're not investing a proper budget in pay-per-click, you can't expect to get any results, or you expect to get very slow results. It doesn't mean it's not working. It just means you're going very, very slowly. Imagine an hourglass with a really, really small gap. It's gonna get there, but it's just gonna take a long time.
The next component in a successful ad campaign is the quality of the ads.
• QUALITY OF AD
So, ad quality, we're going to say is really important because it has a large impact on the amount that you're paying per click. If your ad quality is high, you'll pay less per click than competitors. If your ad quality is low, then you'll pay more per click versus competitors. So you'll get less traffic and you'll be spending more. This greatly increases the importance of what influences ad quality doesn’t it?
HOW CAN YOU MAKE QUALITY WORK FOR YOU?
Well, there are a few things, but let's just use an example. Let's say that I'm searching for diamond engagement rings to buy online. And I see an ad that says, "Buy diamond engagement rings online."
Immediately, that matches what I've searched for, so I'm more likely to click on it, and that means it's going to see a higher click-through rate. That's an indication to Google that that's a good question ad, particularly if it's then using those terms, or other compelling terms, in the ad copy itself. What Google wants to do is to show more of the ads that are getting clicks and less of the ads that aren't getting clicks.
So if my ad is getting clicks, that's an indication that it's good quality. Then if I go through to the landing page and the landing page is all about buying diamond rings online, great. Now when I see that I'm going to browse around, and I might even buy one. So Google is going to see that kind of experience and say, "Okay, this is good."
Now, if we contrast that with another ad, let's say, that said "Buy jewellery online." Now remember, I've just searched for “buy diamond rings online.” If I see that "Buy jewellery online" ad, I'm less likely to click it because actually I just searched for diamond rings, not all jewellery. I don't want to trawl through jewellery. I just want to find the diamond rings, right?
And then let's say that I've somehow mistakenly clicked on the ad, and I land on a page which is all about necklaces and earrings, really low relevance to me, so I'm more likely to get straight back onto Google and click another ad.
Don’t forget that Google is going to see that whole interaction and say, "Okay, that's a low-quality experience," so the ad quality score is going to go down and that's going to put up the CPCs for that particular campaign over time. So, ad quality score is important.
Get it right and you'll pay less for your ads.
The next element of a profitable PPC campaign is your landing page quality.
• LANDING PAGE QUALITY
Now, similar to ad quality, landing page quality has a big impact on the overall success of your profitability, of your PPC campaign.
HOW TO MAKE LANDING PAGE QUALITY WORK FOR YOU?
Taking this example with the 1% conversion rate. If we're converting at 1%, it's gonna take us 20 days to get a lead or sale using that horrifically low example. If this landing page was converting at 10%, it would only take two days to get a lead or sale 'cause we're getting five visitors a day. So 20 days versus two days. If your landing page is converting more of the visitors into leads, it stands to reason you're gonna be making more money for the same amount of clicks.
So, just like lowering your cost per click or increasing your budget,improving your conversion rate is gonna improve the profitability of your campaign.
In the third or fourth stage of this article , we're gonna look at the anatomy of the perfect PPC landing page, so stay tuned for that one. And then the final element, last but definitely not least.
• OFFER OF AD:
The offer is one of the elements that's least talked about in a pay-per-click campaign but is super important.
Let's say that I'm operating a cosmetic dental practice here. And I offers a whole range of dental treatments, but I've realised that lots of people who come in for expensive cosmetic treatments first get their teeth whitened. So what I might do is I might target people who are searching for cosmetic dentists and I might say, "Free teeth whitening in my shop. Come in and have a free consultation." I might even add, "and we're going to project what your perfect smile could look like for you, and then lay out a treatment plan for you." Perhaps something a bit more concise than that would be better, but it's late, so we might take that information and turn it into an ad, and then we might also mention that on the landing page. That has a high-perceived value because the person gets a free teeth whitening and the free consultation. This is really high-perceived value.
People will pay for that, it is so good. And what that's going to mean is that more people are going to click on my ad. I'm going to get a higher click-through rate, a better quality score, or I'm going to get a higher conversion rate on my landing page, and that means that the landing page is going to go up. This is because my offer is good, and it has a high-perceived value.
HOW TO MAKE AN OFFER WORK FOR YOU?
Now, if we compare that to what most people are doing, most dental practices will say something like, "Inquire today." Which is okay, but how high is the perceived value? It's really low, isn't it? What's gonna happen if I inquire? Great, someone's going to try and pitch me on something.
So, there's no perceived value there, which means the click-through rate is going to be lower because people aren't going to be massively fast, "Oh great, I'm gonna click on that one "because they're gonna let me contact them." Or, "Ah, fantastic, what I've always wanted, yes!" And then they get to the landing page and they're like, "Ah, a contact form!" "Ah, this is the best day ever! I can't wait to fill in my details."
Right, but it's just not gonna happen.
So, we are gonna get conversions through that, and contact is fine as a call to action, but it has a much lower perceived value than something more compelling such as the free thing with the consultation.
So, improving the offer can also improve the performance of this whole thing because it helps with making more of our budget; it helps with our quality score; and it helps the landing page conversions as well.
So, those are the kind of core elements of a PPC campaign.
• FINAL VERDICT:
PPC is a great option for businesses who want new leads back. In some cases a PPC campaign can start generating sales within hours of watching. Here's the best part: PPC stands for paid per click and that means you only pay once someone clicks on your ad. If someone searches and reads your ad without clicking on it, you don't have to pay anything, and that's a lot better than TV or radio ads which cost you money regardless of how many people are actually looking at your ad. This is the Analysis of a simple business page that gets growth 10X through PPC Marketing.
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